Riddles of the Sphinx

“Half of you will be trying to guess the riddle, and the other half of you are the riddle.” —Freud, on women

Following the landmark 1975 publication of Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, this film tackles topics of patriarchy, feminism, and motherhood through the lens of psychoanalysis. Critic B. Ruby Rich praised “the heady excitement of watching [the film], the sensuality of the color, and the somewhat hypnotic force of the Ratledge score.” 1977, video, 92 minutes.

Introduced by John Mowitt, Department of Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota